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If you have an emotional reaction to what this guy is saying, you have a chance to learn something about yourself. Consider your own values and assumptions, because any emotional reaction originates in YOU -- it is not coming from him.

See if you can find gaps in your understanding or contradictions in your feelings -- this could be the origin of your emotional reaction.

If this works for you, continue the practice until you find you are ready for the next level.

I'm going to parry this with the idea that the emotional reaction does come from him.
I attended a seminar where someone raised the idea of emotion only originating in the one person. The speaker stood up, threw down his papers and started blaring obscenities at this guy who immediately stood up, started shouting back, and ended up storming out of the room. The speaker proved his point.

There are a number of ideas this guy puts forward that would potentially evoke emotional response if read on paper, however the bulk of his talk is appeal to emotion through colloquialisms and rhetoric.

There is an assumption that religion corrupts, but you can quite easily say religion heals. Now let's do a survey and find out which is the majority.

I'm a teacher. If one of my students is really upset and says "this class is stupid and you're a bad teacher" I don't usually have any emotional reaction except compassion for his unhappiness. (I am not so evolved in all situations.)

If I needed that student to like me, I might feel hurt. If I needed that student to "act respectfully" I might feel anger. If I needed to be "in control", I might feel fright or panic.

Isn't it ME from whom my emotional response originates?

To speak in general again, this must be the case -- because the same stimulus produces wildly different emotional responses in different individuals.

I'm glad you're seeing it as a stimulus and not a completely ignore-able event.
Through mind training we can improve our reactions, however they are still reactions and we do cause things in each other. One self divided will still have inter connective abilities.

Emotions 'originating from us' is just half the story. These private moments we have in our head are shared by all humanity due to our evolution of co-operation.

That's why I believe in some form of spirituality. In some form of excavating what we feel and then sharing it. I don't think that is against reason or somehow fallacious just because it's a bunch of chemicals or whatever. That just makes it as real as anything else, and it's a very important part of every person's life.

And going back to evolution, I don't believe in 'next levels' or generally ascended into some sort of God given better thought process. There is what there is because of our environment, all we can do is best adapt to that and see if we can to survive.

EDIT: Reading your comment again, maybe I am slightly twisting your words. So just don't consider a direct reply at you, just a general sort of add-on.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I don't mean to suggest that an emotional response is fallacious or immature or wrongheaded in and of itself. It is what it is, and a thoughtful person should acknowledge and accept his emotional response and treat it like a signpost pointing toward a lesson.

These private moments we have in our head are shared by all humanity due to our evolution of co-operation.

It probably has more to do with us all having the same equipment. The human brain is pretty plastic, but they're all still a great deal more similar than they are different. If I have a wrench, and you have a wrench, and both of our wrenches can turn a bolt, it's not a sign that wrenches have a transcendental connection; it's a sign that we're using the same tool and getting the same result.

Don't get me wrong, cooperation is a key feature in our evolution. Oxytocin and other chemicals associated with love and affection are important to note. But what you're describing doesn't sound like spirituality to me.

Almost agree, but I don't agree with what he has said about respect, "If you deserve respect, you already have it."

Seems a little fallacious, because it's easy to conceive of hypothetical situations where someone deserves respect for their actions but doesn't get it:
e.g. Performs an act of unseen self-sacrifice for others benefit, then remains humble, or performs some action that's of benefit to others, but their values make them incapable of perceiving the value of the action.

It could be argued, "You shouldn't need respect from people who are too stupid to see what you've done." But if lack of respect is impediment in some goal you have, this is false... Things aren't so black and white as this man has presented them, despite his charisma.

In regards to this, I am unconcerned whether religion is bad or not, but I'd rather all of the arguments against it were logical rather than emotional.

I'm an Atheist myself.... and this dude just sounds like a douche. One of the main arguments AGAINST religion is that it's so intolerant. How is this different? Why can't we give the respect and courtesy we ask of religious folk? So many posts on r/atheism mock anyone with opposing ideas, they try so hard to get one over on believers of religion.... why? Does it really make them feel that much better about themselves? Most Believers love their religion and use it as a mechanism to love others, just fucking let them! Atheists, why cant we practice what we preach (so to speak)?

It's very different. What you're seeing is a reaction to people telling him how he should live his life. That's what every religion boils down to: do it the way that is laid out in the book that is the incontrovertible will of god or be damned.

Oh really? Taoism is specifically okay with people of different beliefs.

Also see Buddhist and Shinto practices. They're all very non-dogmatic and accepting religions, as the former is primarily concerned with personal growth while the latter is, much like modern-day Judaism, not interested in converting people and is as much cultural as it is religious.

Thank you for this reply. It seems to me so many arguments against religion are specifically against Christianity, and people assume that they apply to other religions as well. It's a dangerous kind of thinking that can lead to a dangerous attitude towards other people's beliefs.

I disagree. As a religious studies major and a convert from Catholicism to Judaism, I am often frustrated by how often people conflate the two, and how often they assume criticism of one applies to the other. While our beliefs about creation and religious texts may indeed be similar, and while we do share a common origin of sorts, we have completely different ideas about what our religion means. Jews emphasize practice over belief, and are less dogmatic in opinions about what things mean and what to believe. Religion is a way of life, a culture, a way to relate to each other and to God. It's less about God and more about us and our relationship to God. Christianity, especially Catholicism, is all about believing the right thing, being saved through your belief in Jesus, etc. Obviously there's more to both religions and I'm oversimplifying. I have a lot of respect for both religions (and for atheism, if we're going to go there), but there are certainly problems for both of them, problems which are not necessarily common to both, and criticisms ought to reflect that. Blanket criticisms of religion in my opinion are dangerous because they assume similarity in how people think about their religion and how they practice, and all it takes is a quick look at the diversity of religious belief to realize how problematic blanket statements are.

For instance: I'm religious, but recognize that God probably doesn't exist. I don't fit into the standard paradigm for religious criticism. And writing off my beliefs, which are highly nuanced, personal, and not worth explaining here, as just not making sense, doesn't solve the problem either. My point is we need a more nuanced approach to religious criticism, because I, like so many others in this thread, see many problems with today's religions that are worthy of criticism, but these problems may not exist equally or at all in every tradition.

TL;DR: I, like so many others in this thread, see many problems with today's religions that are worthy of criticism, but these problems may not exist equally or at all in every tradition. As a result I see the need for a more nuanced approach to religious criticism.

As an atheist I don't see any merit in any of the debates about which prophets were truly in touch with God. So I can quickly assess all of Abrahamic monotheism from Orthodox Judaism to Mormonism and Rastafarianism as similar in that sense. What matters is God, and they do all have those issues in common, with the logical problems involved with omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and omnibenevelence.

Calls for a more nuanced approach are just claims that one particular sect is better than the rest, which is in the view of many atheists, the problem in a nutshell.

I hope you don't mind the page of text I've written here. I've assumed that since this is /r/freethought you're willing to go into the issue at length. If you're not willing to read all this, that's fine too, but I'd appreciate your response.

Calls for a more nuanced approach are just claims that one particular sect is better than the rest

Not true, of me at least. I am looking for a more intellectually honest discourse on religion. I don't see blanket criticism as an intellectually honest approach. I chose Judaism because it improved my life. Maybe taking up karate would have improved my life in a similar way. I don't know, I just know Judaism works in a way Christianity didn't. It's not about the logical and theoretical basis for the belief system. Evidence suggests that religious people are much more pragmatic than that. People look for something that works for them. They do not base their arguments in "truths," religious, scientific or otherwise. True, many do adopt beliefs about the Bible as being religious truth, but they tend to be much more relativistic than most atheists assume. What it comes down to is a personal choice of identification.1

What matters is God, and they do all have those issues in common, with the logical problems involved with omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and omnibenevelence.

True, they all share similar issues. I would point out that the Judaic God is not as omibenevolent as the Christian version. Also, I want to ask you something. It seems to me a lot of criticism of religion would apply just as well to other aspects of life as well. For instance, a lot of atheists rightly see religion as something that divides and separates people, pits them against each other. While this is true, is it not also true of political divisions and language barriers? And yet so few atheists argue for abolishing political boundaries and adopting a universal language. It is true that political boundaries and ethnic differences can cause people to hate each other, just as differences in religion. Is it not also true that there are people who are from different countries, ethnic backgrounds, languages and cultures who do not hate each other? I place religion among these categories: It can be a divider, but ultimately it's the attitude of the person that decides how they approach people of difference.

Likewise, you criticize religion as being illogical. I've read a lot of atheist arguments against the logic of religious postulates, and agree with most of them, notably God: The Failed Hypothesis by Victor Stenger. I have a few problems with his logical disproofs of omnipotent and omnipresent gods, specifically that it assumes that logic has an existence outside of the human brain that corresponds to reality in some way. I don't see any philosophical need to make that assumption. But anyway, my point is, why does religion need to be logical? True, the overarching problem atheists have with religion is that it hurts the world, discourages scientific thinking, and leads to violence. I think these points are much more convincing. Language is illogical just as religion...the metaphors inherent in our speech don't correspond to reality but are instead a conceptual framework that helps us to understand it. Likewise religion can be a conceptual framework to give meaning to life without actually corresponding to reality.

My evidence for these points is drawn from Robert Wuthnow's (Director of Sociology at Princeton) research on religion in America, specifically his books Growing Up Religious and especially After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings are Shaping the Future of American Religion. My points therefore apply to mostly American religion. Religion in other countries, especially the global south (read: the "third world"), is a whole other range of issues and problems.

This kind of thinking is extremely dangerous, and it doesn't matter if it is Jewish or Christian or Muslim. As soon as people start blaming random events on God's punishment for such and such they also start looking for more "appropriate" scapegoats.

I'm not sure who or what you're criticizing, and what that link has anything to do with what I said. Are you implying that this guy's views are in any way typical of Jews? Because if so, I can assure you, you are mistaken. There are crazy people from every faith and non-faith, and no one has a monopoly on them, unfortunately.

The point I made that you quoted was simply that, as a whole, Jews emphasize practice and action, while Christians emphasize belief in Jesus. There's more to both sides of the story, but it was intended as a general statement.

Way back, you said that generalizing about religion can "lead to a dangerous attitude towards other people's beliefs" and "Blanket criticisms of religion in my opinion are dangerous..."

But my point is that almost any kind of evil we find exemplified in Christianity is exemplified somewhere in Judaism as well. Therefore I stick to a blanket criticism that it is dangerous for our society to encourage people to live one's life on the basis of assertions which one has no evidence for. In the Jewish context it leads to the same kind of craziness that it does in the Christian context.

There are crazy people from every faith and non-faith, and no one has a monopoly on them, unfortunately.

This particular variety of crazy cannot arise from "non-faith".

"God is punishing us...therefore we must drive the evil out of our society so that God will stop punishing us."

I can safely say that every theistic religion (therefore not buddhists, jainists, ...) is prone to this kind of thinking, which is why I feel comfortable condemning all theistic religion as intrinsically dangerous even when individual strands of it may have temporarily morphed into congenial formats.

One of the main arguments AGAINST religion is that it's so intolerant. How is this different?

If there are (let's say) 6 main arguments against religion, and 1 of them is that it is "intolerant" then most likely "how this is different" has to do with the other 5.

For example:

religion teaches one to accept arguments without evidence "on faith"

religion is compatible in a scary way with mental disability.

most religions prescribe capital punishment for various crimes, some of which are just thought crimes

most religions have origin stories and miracle stories which are at odds with science

many (most?) religious people wish to use the levers of government to enforce the arbitrary rules written in their holy books.

Most Believers love their religion and use it as a mechanism to love others, just fucking let them!

Humanity cannot afford to be enslaved to 3,000 year old superstitions in the 21st century. It amazes me that there are so many atheists that are completely comfortable with the idea that our politicians are in thrall to all kinds of idiosyncratic interpretations of idiosyncratic ancient belief systems.

You know that many of them base their foreign policy on their religious ideas, right? They believe that America is the "shining city on a hill" from the Sermon on the Mount and that Israel must be protected at all costs? etc.?

People vote on the basis that Barack Obama is "obviously" the anti-christ?

It boggles my mind that there are people who are sanguine about this situation.

Let's talk about "most believers", shall we? Do "most believers" think that homosexuals should have equal rights with heterosexuals? Do they believe that women should have complete control over their bodies? Do they believe that the most scientifically proven birth control and HPV vaccination techniques should be promoted by society?

No, I'm not going to "just fucking let them" pretend that their idiosyncratic interpretations of bronze age poetry are a good basis for a life or a society. I am no longer willing to sacrifice the hope of a rational society on the altar of "getting along" and "tolerance." It's time to call a spade a spade.

I think New Atheism is turning into a religion of its own. It already has loud advocates (Dawkins et al), a thriving social community (most subscribed subreddits), certain beliefs in common. It's an organized religion without faith, and that's just as dangerous as organized religion with faith.

The key word is tolerance and it's so obvious atheists simply don't have it. How many more ideological massacres does it take before all atheists are universally condemned to a life of deference and silence?

Like you'd never see a young Norwegian christian farmer sporting popped collars doing anything quite so hateful as criticising folks on youtube.

I completely disagree that faith is a choice. Knowing the effectiveness of love bombarding, propaganda, hypnosis induced by prayer, self-delusion and orwellian fears, I can say that faith is NOT a choice. It's a slippery slope into madness. Or, as Admiral Ackbar would put it, it's a trap. Because once you start believing, it's very, VERY improbable that you'll stop.

All of the religious people I know are exceptionally kind. It's the atheists and similar that are typically hard skinned, cold, and unwilling to tolerate other peoples experiences without giving a logical criticism.

“Compared with Matković and Miloš, whose faces revealed the baseness of their inner natures, Filipović Majstorović seemed kind and gentle - except when the slaughtering was going on. Then he was incomparable. He was the leader of all the mass killings at Gradina. He went off to conduct the slaughtering every night and came back covered with blood.”

You're very correct - displays of exceptional kindness is the fundamental key to civilised harmony. Honest freedom of expression on the other hand is controversial, offensive and needs to be squashed like a bug.

Atheists use logic to come to their stand points. I know that as an atheist I'm in the minority and mote often than not I just don't even mention it. Also, we are the ones that see life as a one time deal with no eternal paradise so I for one am constantly working to ease my fellow man's discomforts. This is all we know we have, and we are all in it together so you better bet I'm a warm and fuzzy kind of person.